Aaron Herold

Aaron Herold is an Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science and International Relations, coordinator of Legal Studies, and co-director of the Forum on Constitutionalism and Democracy. He teaches courses on political theory, constitutional law, and judicial politics. His research focuses on the American constitutional tradition, the political philosophy of the liberal Enlightenment, and the thought of Alexis de Tocqueville—especially as these pertain to questions about the public role of religion and the separation of church and state. His first book, The Democratic Soul: Spinoza, Tocqueville, and Enlightenment Theology, was published by University of Pennsylvania Press in 2021.  His work has also appeared in The American Political Science Review, Political Research Quarterly, The Review of Politics, Perspectives on Political Science, and several edited volumes. Prior to coming to SUNY Geneseo, he taught at Boston College, Rhodes College, the University of Richmond, and the College of the Holy Cross. He has a B.A. from Emory University, an M.A. from the University of Toronto, and a Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin.

Professor Herold is spending the 2023-24 academic year as a Visiting Fellow in the Department of Politics and the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions at Princeton University. While on sabbatical at Princeton, he is working on his second book, which examines the current ascendancy of revolutionary thinking: the idea that social and political institutions should be evaluated, reformed, and perhaps even remade from whole cloth, without regard for existing customs and institutions. This book is tentatively entitled Revolutionary Thinking: Populism, Imperialism, and the Trajectory of Modern Democracy.